BY ANKELI EMMANUEL, Sokoto –
The Dangote Group on Thursday began a 2-day capacity building for 50 journalists from North West states of Nigeria on ethics, skills and personal qualities for reporting in the digital age.
Speaking in his welcome address, the Dangote Head of Communication, Jibril Abubakar said the training is one in the series that Dangote group has been doing to better the journalism profession in Nigeria.
Making presentation on, “Best Practices in Reporting: The 3-Fs Challenge” the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Center For Financial Journalism, Dr Ray Echebiri, noted that reporting has changed drastically with the advent of digitalization.
According to Dr Ray, reporting has now become a now 24 hours activity, because of the rise in various channels of news dissemination, ways of news consumption as well as connectivity of news consumers.
While urging journalists to ensure that their stories are used via social media platforms, Dr Ray further advised media practitioners to have their own blogs to help boost their presence in the global news consumption ladder.
Dr Ray, who listed the 3-F challenges to mean, the First, Fast and Factual in breaking reports, also stressed that, “factual reportage is a power in he hands of journalists.
“For effective reporting, every journalists must win the 3-F challenge by firstly developing very credible sources, good interviewing skills, and consistent research as well as be patient and painstaking to avoid ambiguity and always develop the attitude of protecting their sources”.
Talking of sufficient conditions for overcoming the challenges, Dr Ray made reference to ethics of journalism to include, truth, editorial independence, accuracy, balance, fairness, privacy, privilege and non-disclosure, facts not fiction.
The financial journalism czar further advised media practitioners to have good knowledge of the happenings in the industry or the beats they cover by being curious, inquisitive, pay attention to details, deploy critical thinking, research and analysis data in their reportage.
He also admonished journalists to deploy right languages, adopt the KISS formula of reporting, and knowing the style to use as well as avoid grammatical errors and passive voice,
In a goodwill message, the Kano and Kaduna chairmen, of Nigeria Union of Journalists, (NUJ) Comrades, Ibrahim Abbas, and Asmau Halilu jointly thanked the Dangote group for the opportunity given to media practitioners in the north western states of Nigeria to be trained on ethics, skills and personal qualities for reporting in the digital age.
They also described the experiences as worthwhile, and appealed that the momentum of training journalists should be sustained.
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